How to configure VIVACOM 3g USB ( internet )
modem HUAWEI Mobile broadband E173 on Debian and Ubuntu GNU /
Linux
I've been given a
HUAWEI Mobile Broadband E173 USB 3g model.
The USB modem contains a flash USB Storage segment storing a little
instal l program dedicated to make the modem work fine on
Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / 7 and probably other M$ OSes.
I'm a long time Debian GNU / Linux user and as a free software
enthusiast I ofcourse wanted to be able to use Vivacom's 3G USB
Modem on my Linux powered notebook.
Thanksfully as I've red on
Vivacom's website the modem
supports Linux OS :)
For those unaware in Bulgaria there are currently 3 major GSM
network providers providing 3G internet this are;;;
- VIVACOM - The ex Government ran national company BTC
(Bulgarian Telecommunication Company)
- M-Tel - The first GSM network provider that entered
Bulgaria around year 1995
- GLOBUL - The 3rd and last GSM mobile and net provider
entered last and not so much used by Bulgarians today
Until today I had no experience in running any 3G modems on Linux,
neither I had used the 3 networks 3G internet to determine which
one is best, however I've been given for temporal use a
VIVACOM 3G internet modem today so I proceeded to try
installing it on my Debian host.
My Linux system is a bit strangely configured as I use
wicd
network connection manager -(
wicd-gtk ) to manage
wireless and LAN connections instead of the standard installed
GNOME network manager - available through package (
network-manager-gnome ).
The reason I use
wicd is not that it is so much better than
GNOME network manger but rather for historical reasons
because few years past I had impression it works better in
connecting me to wireless networks. Another reason why I choosed
wicd back then was the nice looking stats ...
I tried plugging in the Vivacom USB 3G modem stick and checked in
wicd to see if I can see a possibility to connect to the
mobile opeartor 3G network but unfortunately nothing
appeared.
Though the 3G adsl modem was unavailable straing in
wicd,
checking about it in the list of attached USB devices I could see
it detected, e.g.:
noah:~# lsusb |grep -i huawei
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 12d1:1c05 Huawei Technologies Co.,
Ltd.
This was at least a good sign pointing me to the thoughts that the
modem is probably gonna work.
I did a quick Google search to see if other people succeded running
the device on a Linux host and came across a few blog posts in
Bulgarian explaining a
"success story" on Ubuntu Linux
through using a tweakened shell script -
sakis3g. For more
on how the script works and
script download check out Sakis3g
Here is a quote from
sakis3g's website describing the
script:
It automagically setups your USB or Bluetoothâ„¢ modem,
and may even detect operator settings.
You should try it when anything else fails!
Sakis3g has different versions designed for for plenty of
spacific hware architectures i.e. for (i386, amd64, armv4t,
armv5t).
There is also a version of the script which by the way contains a
combination of bash shell scripting instruction and some binary
exec data.
To run sakis3g on my laptop I did:
1. Download sakis3g
My notebook architecture is 64 bit so I download and used the amd64
version of the script;;;
hipo@noah:~$ mkdir sakis3g
hipo@noah:~$ cd sakis3g
hipo@noah:~/sakis3g$ wget
http://www.sakis3g.org/versions/latest/amd64/sakis3g.gz
I've made also a mirror of
sakis3g i386, 64 bit and all
architecture the mirrors just in case it disappears in future. The
mirror versions of sakis3g are here:
a. sakis3g
i386 b. sakis3g
amd64 c.
sakis3g all architectures source
2. Unarchive and make it executable
After downloading it as it is in gzip I had to do the usual
de-gzipping and making the file executable;;;
hipo@noah:~/sakis3g$ /bin/gzip -d sakis3g.gz
hipo@noah:~/sakis3g$ chmod +x sakis3g
The script is then ready to run by either clicking twice on it or
(as I prefer for debugging reasons to run it in terminal):
hipo@noah:~$ ./sakis3g
Something that I have wondered a bit was the dialog where I had to
fill in some data of some variable
APN abbreviation for -
(Access Point Name)
The
APN host for VIVACOM mobile internet is;;;
APN: internet.vivacom.bg
I've used the Windows configuration progrma to gather also the
following data that I thought might be important for configuring
the 3G adsl modem on the Linux host;;;
Auth: *99#
User: VIVACOM
pass: VIVACOM
Here are all the configuration screenshots I've taken from
sakis3g and all the data that I filled in.
Next the following tiny window appeared on screen:
Well that's all folks, now
sakis3g succesfully connected to
the I_net via an
(PPP) VPN connection tunnel here is data
from
ifconfig command
showing the succesful 3G connection
to VIVACOM;;;
noah:~# /sbin/ifconfig ppp0
ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:10.58.146.232 P-t-P:10.64.64.64
Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2066 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1609 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
RX bytes:2232058 (2.1 MiB) TX bytes:341693 (333.6
KiB)
The internet via the 3G connection is not blazing fast but good
enough to check your mail or read some webpages. VIVACOM currently
has different (traffic limited packages) for their 3G internet, I'm
not sure which package exactly is the 3G USB stick modem but
probably the "quick" internet connection that is now would slow
down once the traffic limit is reached ...
Hope this post helps someone to configure 3G internet on VIVACOM in
Debian and Ubuntu Linux. Though I've tested
sakis3g on
Debian it should work with no hassles on any other GNU Linux
distribution that has
bash installed.